following up from the last post on familism and corruption (familism, respect for parents, and corruption), here is the second element in lipset & lenz’s “familism index”: “the percentage of people [responding on the world values survey] who think that divorce is unjustifiable.” i looked at the 1999-2002 world values survey wave. the relevant question is:

“Please tell me for each of the following statements whether you think it can always be justified, never be justified, or something in between: Divorce.”

i took the “Never justifiable” responses and plotted them against the 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index results — and got a correlation of -0.58. not as high a correlation as between “respect for parents” and corruption (-0.72), but still pretty high. so the more you feel that divorce is unjustifiable whatever the circumstances, the more corrupt you’re likely to be (click on chart for LARGER view):

here’s the data table for the above chart sorted by the “Never justifiable” responses (highest to lowest). i’ve got the fbd marriage groups (the arabs & co.) in red, and the european groups that i think have been outbreeding for the longest (netherlands, germany, great britain, belgium and france) in blue (click on table for LARGER view):

again, italians and the irish in ireland more familistic on this scale than the people in great britain. and mexicans MUCH more so.

@ihtg – “BTW, it seems to me that South Asians have some kind of autocthonous opposition to divorce that isn’t really related to Islam.”

i was thinking the same thing. pakistan and bangladesh are way up there on the “don’t like divorce” scale, whereas more hard-core muslims like the saudis seem to not care all that much. not much more than the poles or irish — which is more than the anglos, but still.

Catholocism may treat divorce as a kind of death, but Catholics in the West are divorcing. They just choose to leave the church instead. The cultural move to easier divorce overpowers the religious stricture. If the extended family is greatly affected, there is pressure against it. If the nuclear family is stressed, people just shake their heads and say “How sad.”

I relate this to the observation about South Asians versus Saudis regarding divorce. These things seem to be more cultural and economic than religious. People drag their religion along behind, trying to cram it in to what they already want to do. Most of what we call “religious wars” in history are pretty clearly tribal, with religion being A) Part of the tribal identity and B) a source of justification.

The old joke is that The Troubles in Ireland are low-intensity wars between those who don’t go to church and those who don’t go to Mass. A chrurch can change a culture over time. But the culture is pushing back, changing the church as well.

@avi – “People drag their religion along behind, trying to cram it in to what they already want to do. Most of what we call ‘religious wars’ in history are pretty clearly tribal, with religion being A) Part of the tribal identity and B) a source of justification.”

i soooo agree with you on this. 110%! in fact, i think you’ve summed it all up perfectly here!

@avi – The old joke is that The Troubles in Ireland are low-intensity wars between those who don’t go to church and those who don’t go to Mass.”

heh.

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